From the head of the conference table in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, Stephen Miller was in the weeds of President Donald Trump’s takeover of policing in the nation’s capital.
Mostly Monday Reads: It can get Worse
Posted: November 24, 2025 Filed under: #FARTUS, ICE raids, Law suits against the Trump Regime, Memphis, Trump Crime Task Force | Tags: @repeat1968. John Buss, Crime Task Force, ICE raids, ICE Raids and children, Lawsuits against Trumpism, Memphis, New Orleans 4 Comments
“The man is a machine, he never stops working to make America greater, again.” John Buss.
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Numerous rallies and organizing efforts have taken place here in New Orleans. We’re seeing ICE and Border Patrol officers from all over invade the city. No massive action yet, but some people are being arrested and kidnapped. Here’s the kind’ve information I’m seeing reported by Unión Migrante. This is today.
Monday, November 24 at 8:45am there was a checkpoint coming down the English Turn Bridge towards Plaquemines Parish towards Belle Chasse. They were eating 6 police officers in marked cars
ros and 4 officers in private clothes with vests and private cars marc️ Est
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We’ve seen detainees here earlier with ICE and these police officers coordinating together as asking about brake stickers and then asking people where they were born.
The invaders are staying at a military base in Belle Chasse, which is south and east of us in Plaquemines Parish. Meanwhile, it’s happening everywhere. It’s cruel. It’s ugly. It’s not the way to run a democracy or a government. It is also happening elsewhere. This is from The Barbed Wire, as reported by Leslie Rangel. “A Disabled Child’s Mom Reported Him Missing. He Was Locked Away by Federal Immigration Authorities for 48 Days. Emmanuel Gonzalez, a 15-year-old who has an intellectual disability, walked away from his mom’s fruit stand in October. Houston Police called ICE instead of reuniting them.”
In early October, Emmanuel walked away from his mom’s fruit stand to find a bathroom. Garcia looked for him all over the city, and after several hours of coming up empty handed, she filed a missing person’s report with the Houston Police Department.
The boy was found by Houston firefighters nearly 24 hours later. But instead of reuniting him with his mom, the police department turned him over to immigration authorities, and Emmanuel ended up in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), where he remained for 48 days, despite his mother’s pleas for him to be released into her care.
Immigration-related arrests and detentions have surged under the Trump administration, particularly in Texas. According to analysis by the Texas Tribune, daily arrests have risen roughly 30 percentage points in ICE regions including Houston, and the Harris County Jail leads the country in ICE detainers — requests from immigration agents to hold a person for deportation. The Houston Chronicle found police calls to ICE have surged 1,000%.
The vast majority — more than 70% — of those arrested haven’t committed any crime. And, in an increasing number of cases, calls for help to the Houston Police Department have resulted in the caller or a family member winding up in federal detention. In one case, a woman from El Salvador called Houston police to report an abusive ex-husband — instead officers called ICE on her.
Emmanuel’s story enraged many Houston residents as community members grappled with the cruelty of keeping a disabled child locked away from his mother.
In the 48 days since he left her side, Garcia was only allowed to see Emmanuel three times. Once when he needed emergency surgery. The second time was during a scheduled visit facilitated by her legal team and U.S. Rep. Al Green. In that case, Garcia and her son got to hug each other and share a meal.
The stress, fear, and anxiety of this is not existential for me. One of my closest friends is in hiding. The worry is hard to control. I can’t even imagine what kind of hell a mother whose child has been kidnapped feels for 48 straight days. We’re gathering up food and resources for our neighbors living in this reality. This is the reality I am in, as reported by CNN. “In New Orleans, immigrants are staying home and hiding out as city braces for Border Patrol operation.” The story is reported by Zoe Sottile.
In New Orleans, people are used to having their resilience tested.
There was Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill, a major hotel collapse, a vicious early pandemic surge and a terror attack during the 2025 New Year’s celebrations.
Now immigrants and organizers say they’re preparing for what feels like may be another disaster heading for their community: Top Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino and roughly 250 federal agents are expected to launch an immigration enforcement operation in the city starting the first week of December, according to two sources familiar with the planning. Advocates and residents told CNN they’re preparing a bit like they would for one of the hurricanes that have ravaged the sinking city.
“The immigrant community is feeling absolute panic and terrified,” Rachel Taber, a volunteer with Unión Migrante, an immigrant-led advocacy group, said. “People are treating it like a hurricane as much as they can, buying groceries, staying in the house, planning not to be able to go to work.”
The 307-year-old city, a blue enclave in a Republican-led state, will be the latest target of the Department of Homeland Security’s operations, according to those two sources, part of the president’s pledge to enact mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
In response to questions from CNN about the operation, DHS sent a statement from Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin: “For the safety and security of law enforcement, we’re not going to telegraph potential operations.”
Operations in other cities have featured the armed, masked federal agents and unmarked vehicles that have become a hallmark of immigration enforcement under the second Trump administration. The agents have also been criticized over their use of force against both US citizens and non-citizens, including shootings, tear gas and flash bangs.
About 23,400 immigrants make the Cresent City their home — roughly 6.5% of the total population, according to data from the US Census. Over half of those are non-citizens.
Around half of New Orleans’ immigrant population is from Latin America, according to Census data. And immigrants’ share of the population is smaller than in other cities where Bovino has led arrests.
This just appeared in my feed from our local online news source, Nola.com. “Letters: Witnessing immigration raid firsthand raises tremendous concern.” It’s written by Anna Herman.
My family immigrated to this country from Eastern Europe to escape persecution and enjoy a better life in a land they had never seen. Their journey was not easy, but they worked incredibly hard peddling goods until they could own their own stores. It’s unbelievable to think of what my great-grandparents went through so my family could have a future in this country.
Many are still dreaming of coming to America to work hard and create a better life for their families. Meanwhile, the news around immigration enforcement in this country is sad, overwhelming and easy to tune out. I admit that some days I shut out the news, stay in my bubble and focus on my life. However, that bubble burst after I witnessed people being kidnapped in broad daylight.
While I was in the parking lot at Lowe’s in Metairie, my friend and I saw men aggressively shoving people to the ground, and we realized we were witnessing an ICE raid. These supposed government officials wore masks and shoved their victims into unmarked cars with Mississippi plates. I repeatedly asked the masked men what agency they were with. They responded that they did not have to tell me, while pulling their masks up higher.
The New Orleans community cannot be OK with this. We must demand due process. Regardless of political leanings, we share an obligation to stop people from being snatched off the street.
History tells us that without resistance, this doesn’t end here. If we say nothing and do nothing, this could soon very well happen to you or me. Now is the time to ask yourself what you can do to make sure your actions match your values.
My city has survived a lot. But the basic idea of living in an American city and being invaded by American forces is a terrible sin against the U.S. Constitution and us. It must end. The AP reports on another invasion in Memphis, which also leaves me feeling sick this morning. We don’t have a Department of Justice; we have a Department of Domestic Terror. “Thousands of arrests by Trump’s crime-fighting task force in Memphis strain crowded jail and courts.”
A task force ordered by President Donald Trump to combat crime in Memphis, Tennessee, has made thousands of arrests, compounding strains on the busy local court system and an already overcrowded jail in ways that concerned officials say will last months or even years as cases play out.
Since late September, hundreds of federal, state and local law enforcement personnel tied to the Memphis Safe Task Force have made traffic stops, served warrants and searched for fugitives in the city of about 610,000 people. More than 2,800 people have been arrested and more than 28,000 traffic citations have been issued, data provided by the task force and Memphis police shows.
The task force, which includes National Guard troops, is supported by Republican Gov. Bill Lee and others who hope the surge reduces crime in a city that has grappled with violent crime, including nearly 300 homicides last year and nearly 400 in 2023.
From 2018 to 2024, homicides in Memphis increased 33% and aggravated assaults rose 41%, according to AH Datalytics, which tracks crimes across the country using local law enforcement data for its Real-Time Crime Index. But AH Datalytics reported those numbers were down 20% during the first nine months of this year, even before the task force got to work.
Opponents of the task force in majority-Black Memphis say it targets minorities and intimidates law-abiding Latinos, some of whom have skipped work and changed social habits, such as avoiding going to church or restaurants, fearing they will be harassed and unfairly detained. Statistics released at the end of October showed 319 arrests so far on administrative warrants, which deal with immigration-related issues.
This seriously feels like we’ve got a NAZI problem here. This reeks of Himmler’s Schutzstaffel, also known as the SS, printed with its stylized runes. ( ᛋᛋ ) The name literally means “Protection Squadron”. So, this is what our National Security looks like now. This is like a bad movie or a bad dream. This is from Steve Vladek writing at One First. ” Another Bad Week for the Presumption of Regularity. Three different flashpoints highlight how much the Trump administration has done, in such short order, to undermine its own litigation efforts and to damage—perhaps irreparably—DOJ’s credibility.”
Back in January, just three days into the second Trump administration, I wrote a post titled “On the Credibility of the Department of Justice.” The post identified a couple of (very early) signs that the administration was already engaging in behavior that gave reason to worry about whether the federal government would adhere to its long history of turning square corners in the federal courts—and hypothesized some of the ways in which a Department of Justice that lost credibility would not only struggle with relatively straightforward litigation tasks, but would make it far harder, going forward, for courts to defer to government officials even in circumstances in which they should, all at the expense of what’s long been known as the “presumption of regularity.”
Ten months later, that post reads as impressively naive about the depths to which the administration would sink; the outright defiance of at least some lower court orders in which it would engage; and the deep, perhaps irreparable damage its behavior would do to public faith in the integrity (or even the minimal competence) of the Department of Justice. Last week alone, developments in three different cases—the criminal prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey; the ongoing efforts to remove Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the United States; and the civil suit challenging the behavior of federal law enforcement officers in Chicago during Operation Midway Blitz—all provided dramatic, independent evidence of the same broader theme: Whereas the first Trump administration was often characterized as “malevolence tempered by incompetence,” this is worse: it’s malevolence exacerbated by incompetence. That’s problematic enough for the government’s credibility before federal district judges. But at some point soon, one suspects that the Supreme Court itself may well have to grapple with its consequences—or risk being duped.
This protest includes my friend, who is a music professor at Loyola. She’s the one in the costume holding the “DUE PROCESS” sign. You may read more about pending courses at the link. There are numerous court cases pending to clarify some of the Trump administration’s actions. The bigger question is, will they continue to ignore rulings while waiting for the Supreme Court to intervene on their behalf? This one just popped up on my feed from CNN.”Federal judge dismisses indictments against Letitia James and James Comey, saying Lindsey Halligan appointment was unlawful.”
A federal judge dismissed the indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday.
The judge found that the appointment of interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan in Alexandria, Virginia, was invalid.
Trump handpicked Halligan for the role amid increasing pressure to bring criminal cases against his political enemies, including Comey and James.
“The Attorney General’s attempt to install Ms. Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was invalid,” Judge Cameron McGowan Currie wrote in her Monday order.
According to Currie, “all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment” including the indictments against Comey and James “were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside.”
The judge tossed out the cases “without prejudice,” leaving open the possibility that the cases against Comey and James can be brought again alleging the same conduct.
CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
James issued a statement after the charges against her were dropped.
I must admit that the stress of all this is wearing on me. I got a phone call from my friend. That lowers my blood pressure a little. I don’t know how much longer we can continue like this. I’ve always stocked my house with canned goods and such during a hurricane. Doing it for a friend who is in danger if they go outside their house is an entirely different emotion and level of stress, as well as that feeling of helplessness. So be strong, do whatever you can to save our country from that horrible monster and his cabinet of goons. Protect who you can. We can’t let our country go down like this.
What’s on your reading, action, and blogging list today?
We have come too far to turn around
We are here to bear witness
To this monstrous sickness
But we have come too far to turn around
We have stared into the eyes of evil
We have slow danced with the devil
We have sat down at his table
And shared with him in the feast
We have swallowed the liquid of his lies
Tolerated the one we despise
Finally Friday Reads: It’s all as Bad as you Think
Posted: September 5, 2025 Filed under: American Fascists, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Constitutional Crises, Corrupt and Political SCOTUS, Economic Racism and injustice, kakistocracy, kleptocracy, Polycrisis, religious extremists | Tags: Amy Coney Barrett, and racist, D.C., Department of War, E.J. Antoni, Federal Occupation of Washington, ICE raids, NAZI, RFK Jr Weirdo, sexist, shadow docket, Stephen Miller, Trump tanks the economy, Weirdo 5 Comments
“Arrgh, Matey!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
For the moment, the BLS is still providing reliable measurements of economic activity in the USA. The employment numbers are showing signs of bad policy and Trump-inflicted wounds. The strain from the tariffs is beginning to show. This is from The Guardian. “US added just 22,000 jobs in August, continuing slowdown amid Trump tariffs. The latest report also contained more bad news – the US lost 13,000 jobs in June, according to the latest survey.”
“The US jobs market stalled over the summer, adding just 22,000 jobs in August and continuing a slowdown in the labor market as businesses adjusted to disruptions caused by tariffs.
The latest jobs report also contained more bad news. The US lost 13,000 jobs in June, according to the latest survey, the first time it went into the negative since December 2020.
The unemployment rate for August inched up to 4.3%, the highest it’s been since 2021.
The healthcare sector added 31,000 last month but most other sectors were flat or lost jobs.
Trump’s new BLS leader has a disgusting past. This is from CNN. “Trump’s pick to lead BLS ran Twitter account with sexually degrading, bigoted attacks.” As usual, Trump hires “only the very best.” Go see his photos. He’s as creepy as Stephen Miller.
President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics operated a since-deleted Twitter account that featured sexually degrading attacks on Kamala Harris, derogatory remarks about gay people, conspiracy theories, and crude insults aimed at critics of President Donald Trump.
E.J. Antoni, a 37-year-old economist for the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, posted the comments from approximately 2017 through 2020 under a series of usernames and display names. CNN verified that all of Antoni’s posts came from the same Twitter account and that the posts from the anonymous aliases shared strikingly similar biographical details as Antoni.
An outspoken critic of the nonpartisan BLS, which calculates US job growth and unemployment figures, Antoni is a stout Trump loyalist. NBC News reported and CNN confirmed that he was a “bystander” at the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. There is no evidence he entered the Capitol.
His appointment comes after Trump fired the Biden-appointed BLS commissioner and accused the agency without evidence of corruption after a report showed job growth in May and June was weaker than previously estimated.
Antoni has positioned himself as a watchdog for government accountability in media appearances and Heritage Foundation blog posts. But his own digital trail reveals a pattern of incendiary rhetoric that veered frequently into conspiracy theories and misogyny.
In 2019, the since-deleted account known as “ErwinJohnAntoni” changed its username to “phdofbombsaway.” The account posted at least five sexually suggestive tweets implying that then Sen. Kamala Harris had advanced her career through sexual favors.
Shortly after Harris ended her 2020 presidential campaign, Antoni wrote, “You can’t run a race on your knees,” in response to a tweet of a doctored campaign poster that depicted a sexually explicit image of Harris.
Antoni also referred to Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, as “Miss Piggy.” In February 2020, he retweeted a post titled “Advice For Women: How To Land a Great Guy,” which instructed women to “be in shape,” “grow your hair long,” “be sweet,” “learn to cook,” and “don’t be annoying.” The post concluded: “Angry feminists and simps will try to sabotage you in the comments. Don’t listen to them. Listen to me.”
Disgusting.
Speaking of disgusting Trump appointees, Steven Miller is evidently the one running the District into the ground, according to the Washington Post. “How Stephen Miller is running Trump’s effort to take over D.C.” It’s amazing how many young NAZIs are in his employ.
Miller’s remarks were described to The Washington Post by two people with knowledge of the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House business. The result is a behind-the-scenes glimpse of one of Trump’s most trusted aides in action, someone who has emerged as a key enforcer of the D.C. operation in the month since Trump federalized the local police department and deployed thousands of National Guard troops to patrol city streets. While widely seen as a vocal proponent for the president’s push on immigration and law and order, Miller’s actions reveal how much he is actually driving that agenda inside the White House.
The deputy White House chief of staff has emerged as a key enforcer of the D.C. operation in the month since Trump federalized the local police department.
“It’s his thing,” one White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. “Security, crime, law enforcement — it’s his wheelhouse.”
Miller’s team provides an updated report each morning on the arrests made the night before to staff from the White House, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security, among others. The readouts include a breakdown of how many of those arrested are undocumented immigrants.
He has also led weekly meetings in the Roosevelt Room with his staff and members of the D.C. mayor’s office. Last week, he brought Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, according to two people briefed on the meeting. It’s unclear why Bessent attended the meeting.
A person familiar with Bessent’s thinking said he was encouraged by D.C. officials’ enthusiasm and collaborative tone.
Yam Tits and Miller know they have the District’s leaders over a barrel. Its special status gives the federal government a lot of power over the District. Its leadership is undoubtedly trying to avoid Trump taking the entire District over and removing them.
The source of all federal power over Washington comes from Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution. It grants Congress authority “To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever” over the federal district.
That phrase—”exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever”—is absolute. It establishes a power imbalance between the federal government and D.C. residents that has defined their relationship for over two centuries.
Undoubtedly, the Supreme Court would give Orange Tits whatever he wanted.
Trump’s approach to the economy and foreign policy continues to bring one failure after another. The Washington Examiner reports that “Immigration officers raid Hyundai EV manufacturing site in Georgia.” This is a bizarre strategy given that any produced in the United States goes to the US GDP numbers despite foreign ownership. Additionally, these are good jobs for parts of the country that really need them. Then there’s the factor that we just pissed off one of our major trade partners. This makes no sense whatsoever.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told the Associated Press that agents were focused on the electric vehicle battery plant construction site.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that agents executed a search warrant “as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other serious federal crimes.” It did not say whether anyone was detained or arrested.
Georgia State Patrol troopers blocked the road to the Hyundai plant, and the state Department of Public Safety said it was assisting. A social media video showed agents telling workers that they were with DHS and that they had a search warrant.
“We need construction to cease immediately,” the man said. “We need all work to end on the site right now.”
Operations at Hyundai’s EV manufacturing plant weren’t stopped, a spokesperson said.
The joint venture, HL-GA Battery Company, “is cooperating fully with the appropriate authorities,” the company said. “To assist their work, we have paused construction,” they added.
The administration has targeted other businesses in large raids as well. Two California cannabis farm raids in July yielded more than 300 arrests. One farm worker died after sustaining injuries during the raid.
The Trump administration has made deporting numerous illegal immigrants and migrants a top priority.
The Wall Street Journal reports, “Hundreds Arrested in Immigration Raid at Hyundai Site in Georgia. South Korea protests after more than 300 Korean company workers are detained.”
Nearly 500 people were arrested as part of an immigration raid at a Hyundai Motor battery plant under construction in Georgia as part of a criminal investigation into employment practices at the site, a Homeland Security official said Friday.
The operation Thursday resulted in the arrest of 475 individuals. More than 300 were South Korean nationals, according to an official from the country.
Those arrested had illegally crossed the border, entered through a visa waiver program that prohibited them from working or had overstayed their visas, Steven Schrank, a special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Atlant a, said at a press conference Friday morning.
“This was the largest single site enforcement operation in the history of Homeland Security investigations,” Schrank said.
No criminal charges were filed as of Friday, he said, and the investigation remains ongoing.
“Those who exploit our workforce, undermine our economy, and violate our federal laws will be held accountable,” Schrank said. Schrank said the government’s investigation has been ongoing for months.
The carmaker has pledged $26 billion in U.S. investments in recent weeks.
South Korea protested the action to the U.S. and said it was trying to secure the release of its citizens.
“This was not an immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks and put them on buses,” Schrank said. “This has been a multimonth criminal investigation where we have developed evidence, conducted interviews, gathered documents, and presented that evidence to the court in order to obtain a judicial search warrant.”
A search warrant in the case was issued Aug. 31, according to a court filing. The government filed a motion to unseal a redacted version of the warrant Friday, and a judge granted the request. A copy of the warrant wasn’t immediately available.
“The United States is proud to be a home for major investments and looks forward to continuing to build on these historic investments and partnerships that President Trump has secured,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman. “Any foreign workers brought in for specific projects must enter the United States legally and with proper work authorizations. President Trump will continue delivering on his promise to make the United States the best place in the world to do business, while also enforcing federal immigration laws.”
The New York Times (gifted article) reports that we now have a diplomatic issue with an ally, South Korea. “South Koreans Swept Up in Immigration Raid at Hyundai E.V. Plant in Georgia. They were among nearly 500 workers apprehended at a construction site for a South Korean battery maker, officials said. The episode prompted diplomatic concern in Seoul.” Like I said previously, why would you want to disturb a huge plant that is creating good jobs and value for our country?
The battery manufacturer, LG Energy Solution, which co-owns the plant with Hyundai Motor Group, said in a statement that employees of both companies had been taken into custody.
Hyundai said in a statement that none of those detained were Hyundai employees, as far as the company was aware.
“We are closely monitoring the situation and working to understand the specific circumstances,” Hyundai said on Friday.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry confirmed on Friday that South Koreans were among those in custody, without saying how many. Mr. Schrank told reporters at the plant on Thursday that some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents had been detained initially and were being released.
The agencies involved in the operation included the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the F.B.I., according to the Atlanta division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which also participated.
The operation, part of President Trump’s crackdown on immigration, caused diplomatic alarm in South Korea. Just over a week earlier, Mr. Trump hosted President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea at the White House, where the South Korean leader pledged to invest an additional $150 billion in the United States, including in battery manufacturing.
The lithium-ion battery plant, which predated Mr. Lee’s pledge, was expected to start operating next year. It is the kind of large-scale, job-creating investment that the United States has pushed for from South Korea and other nations.
The Ellabell site is part of one of Georgia’s largest manufacturing plants. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, has promoted the $7.6 billion Hyundai E.V. factory there as the largest economic development project in state history.
Yes, I saved the most disgusting for last. The RFK Jr. hearing yesterday was on a whole different level as the pathological liar and loony proved himself unfit again and again. There were some major players in the Senate Committee showing exactly how ignorant Worm Boy is of his own department and science. The one thing I found amazing was the number of Republicans giving him a difficult time. There are likely several reasons for this. NBC News‘ Berkley Lovelace reports the story. “Ahead of Kennedy hearing, GOP saw poll showing Trump voters support vaccines. The poll, conducted by veteran Republican pollsters, found that a majority of Trump voters believe vaccines save lives and support immunizations against measles and hepatitis B.”
Polling showing that a majority of President Donald Trump’s voters support vaccines was shared with several Republicans lawmakers’ staffers in a closed-door meeting Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the meeting.
NBC News obtained a copy of a memo, dated Aug. 26, summarizing the poll results. It was conducted by veteran Republican pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward and concluded “that there is broad unity across party lines supporting vaccines such as measles (MMR), shingles, tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (TDAP), and Hepatitis B.” Fabrizio and Ward presented the findings during the meeting, the sources said.
In an email to NBC News, Ward confirmed the memo was authentic but declined to comment about the meeting. It’s unclear who commissioned the poll or arranged the meeting. A source close to the White House denied that the administration requested the poll.
The poll results may explain the shift in tone from some GOP senators at Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s hearing Thursday before the Finance Committee.
Among those at Wednesday’s meeting were staff members for senators on the Finance Committee, according to one of the sources.
The hearing grew contentious at times, with Kennedy facing questions from both Democrats and Republicans about limiting access to this fall’s Covid vaccines and the dismissal of newly confirmed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez.
Alexander Bolton from The Hill provides a similar analysis. “GOP senators signal to Trump that Kennedy is on thin ice.”
Republican senators are sending clear signs of disapproval and unhappiness with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., making it plain to President Trump that they want the administration to address the chaos Kennedy has caused by trying to rewrite the nation’s vaccine policies.
GOP senators have stopped short of calling on Kennedy to resign and haven’t yet said they regret voting for him in February, but they want him to back off efforts to change vaccine policy recommendations without sound scientific backing as the administration faces a growing public backlash.
Kennedy received an unusual admonishment from Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), an orthopedic surgeon, when he testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday.
“I support vaccines. I’m a doctor. Vaccines work,” said Barrasso, the Senate’s No. 2-ranking Republican leader.
“Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines,” he said. “Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned.”
Barrasso pointed to a national measles outbreak, the sudden ouster of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez, and questions raised by the leadership of the National Institutes of Health over mRNA vaccines as raising troubling questions.
“Americans don’t know who to rely on,” he said. “If we’re going to make America healthy again, we can’t allow public health to be undermined.”
Here’s Elizabeth Warren shredding the Worm Guy.
Some smart aide to my Senator Bill Cassidy evidently suggested that he kiss up to Yam Tits while shredding Worm Guy. He’s not so popular down here for reelection. The MAGA crowd calls him a Rhino and hates that he actually voted to impeach Trump. That vote was one of the few things he’s ever shown a spine about.
The drama between the rest of the world and Orange Caligula continues. Here are some headlines, including one of those “praise dear leader” by the tech businesses.
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Brian Barrett / Wired: Tech CEOs Praise Donald Trump at White House Dinner — At a White House dinner Thursday night, America’s tech executives put on an uncanny display of fealty to Donald Trump. — The camera zooms too close to the president’s face; the table at which the tech executives are seated seems far too long.
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Tom Nichols / The Atlantic: The World No Longer Takes Trump Seriously — At parades and in the halls of global power, America has been sidelined. — The leaders of Russia, China, and North Korea are not good men. They preside over brutal autocracies replete with secret police and prison camps.
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NBC News: Trump grows pessimistic about the prospect of ending the Russia-Ukraine war
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Erica L. Green / New York Times: Trump Administration to End Security Programs Protecting European Allies From Russia
I’m still waiting for the latest on our new Department of War and our open hostilities with Venezuela. Feeling great and safe yet?
Here’s one last article about one of the major loonies in the Supreme Court. This is from NBC News. “Justice Amy Coney Barrett says country is not in a ‘constitutional crisis’. Speaking to Free Press founder Bari Weiss to promote her new book, the conservative justice said the American people should trust the Supreme Court.” The last group of people I would trust with anything are the so-called conservatives on the Supreme Court.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett said Thursday she does not believe the United States is in a constitutional crisis as President Donald Trump seeks to unilaterally reshape the government and his administration frequently feuds with judges.
Barrett, a Trump appointee who is part of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority, defended the Supreme Court as an institution and said Americans should have faith in its ability to address probing problems with integrity.
“I think the Constitution is alive and well,” Barrett said in an interview with Bari Weiss, hosted by the Free Press in New York, to promote her new book.
“I don’t know what a constitutional crisis would look like. I don’t think that we are currently in a constitutional crisis, however,” she added. “I think our country remains committed to the rule of law. I think we have functioning courts.”
A constitutional crisis would have arrived if “the rule of law crumbled,” Barrett said. But, she added, “that is not a place where we are.”
Lower courts have frequently blocked Trump’s executive actions as unlawful exercises of power, only for the Supreme Court in most cases to then rule in favor of the administration via brief orders that often include no reasoning.
And Weirdo Kavanaugh thinks shadow docket is too truthy and wants it renamed “interim docket”. This does not feel like the country I grew up in at all.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?
Mostly Monday Reads: Of Wars and Kings
Posted: June 16, 2025 Filed under: Canada, fundamentalist Christians, ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement, kakistocracy | Tags: #NoKings, @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, Brain Trust Drain, G7 Summit 2024, ICE raids, Israel - Iraq War, Russia 11 Comments
“A good time was had by all.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The contrast between weekend events could not have been more glaring. All over the country, in cities big and small, as well as rural areas, people turned out for the No Kings event. Then, there was a very boring, sparsely attended military parade in Washington, D.C. Another contrast was the protest, which was peaceful except for a few Police officers who couldn’t seem to control themselves. Then, there were the political assassinations in Minnesota, where the suspect has all the components of today’s Republican Party and MAGA Domestic Terrorism. Minnesota Law Enforcement caught up to him last night, and his resume is replete with activities you’d expect of a lone wolf shooter’s wet dreams.
This is from the AP this morning. “Friends say Minnesota shooting suspect was deeply religious and conservative.” I think those two words don’t mean what they’re supposed to imply. The Pope is deeply religious without the need to kill and hate people who disagree with him. I’m not even sure how to define conservatism anymore, but it seems to be ever-evolving as we march backward to fascism. This man was a monster and could’ve been profiled as such if anyone was paying attention. I guess it’s easier for Republicans to demonize folks by color, ethnic background, religions not of their choosing, and women who won’t be enslaved. His actions and words should have caught attention much earlier.
The man accused of assassinating the top Democrat in the Minnesota House held deeply religious and politically conservative views, telling a congregation in Africa two years ago that the U.S. was in a “bad place” where most churches didn’t oppose abortion.
Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was captured late Sunday following a two-day manhunt authorities described as the largest in the state’s history. Boelter is accused of impersonating a police officer and gunning down former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their home outside Minneapolis. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz described the shooting as “a politically motivated assassination.”
Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, were shot earlier by the same gunman at their home nearby but survived.
Friends and former colleagues interviewed by AP described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for President Donald Trump. Records show Boelter registered to vote as a Republican while living in Oklahoma in 2004 before moving to Minnesota where voters don’t list party affiliation.
Tom Toles Editorial Cartoon
Lisa Leur, writing in this Morning’s New York Times, also states the sad facts. “Like School Shootings, Political Violence Is Becoming Almost Routine. Threats and violent acts have become part of the political landscape, still shocking but somehow not so surprising.” All of this has sent me back to 1992 when my toddler and I were stalked by them and continually harassed. They’ve been bombing clinics and horse barns and murdering health care workers. Timothy McVeigh would thrive in this environment. His type of people are just out in the open now. (“Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was spotted Saturday at a No Kings protest near the Torch of Friendship in downtown Miami.“) The continual escalation of this has not been difficult to predict. The FBI, prior to Yam Tits, continually warned Congress of the issue. The Republicans charged them with being politically motivated. They have evolved a completely useless definition of law and order these days.
“Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America,” the president said.
And yet the expanding club of survivors of political violence seemed to stand as evidence to the contrary.
In the past three months alone, a man set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s residence while Mr. Shapiro and his family were asleep inside; another man gunned down a pair of workers from the Israeli Embassy outside an event in Washington; protesters calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colo., were set on fire; and the Republican Party headquarters in New Mexico and a Tesla dealership near Albuquerque were firebombed.
And those were just the incidents that resulted in death or destruction.
Against that backdrop, it might have been shocking, but it was not really so surprising, when on Saturday morning, a Democratic state representative in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark, were assassinated in their home, and a Democratic state senator, John A. Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, were shot and wounded.
Slowly but surely, political violence has moved from the fringes to an inescapable reality. Violent threats and even assassinations, attempted or successful, have become part of the political landscape — a steady undercurrent of American life.
For months now, Representative Greg Landsman, Democrat of Ohio, has been haunted by the thought that he could be shot and killed. Every time he campaigns at a crowded event, he said, he imagines himself bleeding on the ground.
“It’s still in my head. I don’t think it will go away,” he said of the nightmarish vision. “It’s just me on the ground.”
The image underscores a duality of political violence in America today. Like school shootings, it is both sickening and becoming almost routine, another fact of living in an anxious and dangerously polarized country.
Catching actual criminals is not on the radar with this administration. In fact, they’re doubling down on their anti-immigrant antics despite recent polls showing it highly unpopular. “New poll: Trump and deportations unpopular with voters, Dems up 8 in House vote. More: 60% see ethics/corruption problems in Trump administration, and the “Abundance Agenda” is popular (except zoning reform).” This is from the substack of G. Elliot Morris. However, the White House is not watching those polls. The AP has this report today. “Trump directs ICE to expand deportations in Democratic-run cities, undeterred by protests.” My guess is that he was pissed by the lack of interest in his parade and wants more cities to experience the chaos that he brought L.A. with marines and National Guard interference. This is reported by Aamer Madhani.
President Donald Trump on Sunday directed federal immigration officials to prioritize deportations from Democratic-run cities, a move that comes after large protests erupted in Los Angeles and other major cities against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Trump in a social media posting called on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials “to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”
He added that to reach the goal officials ”must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside.”
Trump’s declaration comes after weeks of increased enforcement, and after Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said ICE officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump’s second term.
At the same time, the Trump administration has directed immigration officers to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels, after Trump expressed alarm about the impact aggressive enforcement is having on those industries, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter who spoke only on condition of anonymity.
This seems to verify that Yam Tits’ policy depends on who he talks to last. Also, the police in most large cities are bad enough. Why up the stakes with military with no crowd control training?
Protests over federal immigration enforcement raids have been flaring up around the country.
Opponents of Trump’s immigration policies took to the streets as part of the “no kings” demonstrations Saturday that came as Trump held a massive parade in Washington for the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army.
Saturday’s protests were mostly peaceful.
But police in Los Angeles used tear gas and crowd-control munitions to clear out protesters after the event ended.
Officers in Portland, Oregon, also fired tear gas and projectiles to disperse a crowd that protested in front of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building well into the evening.
This term has already been a lesson on why Trump basically runs every business to bankruptcy and begging to renegotiate the terms of his debt. Trump’s pet projects are massively expensive and have never been funded by Congress. As I mentioned last week, ICE is running out of funds. This is from AXIOS as reported by Britanny Gibson. “ICE’s cash crisis deepens amid immigration crackdown.”
President Trump‘s immigration crackdown is burning through cash so quickly that the agency charged with arresting, detaining and removing unauthorized immigrants could run out of money next month.
Why it matters: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is already $1 billion over budget by one estimate, with more than three months left in the fiscal year. That’s alarmed lawmakers in both parties — and raised the possibility of Trump clawing funds from agencies to feed ICE.
- Lawmakers say ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is at risk of violating U.S. law if it continues to spend at its current pace.
- That’s added urgency to calls for Congress to pass Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which could direct an extra $75 billion or so to ICE over the next five years.
- It’s also led some lawmakers to accuse DHS and ICE of wasting money. “Trump’s DHS is spending like drunken sailors,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the DHS appropriations subcommittee.
Zoom in: ICE’s funding crisis is being fueled by Trump’s team demanding that agents arrest 3,000 immigrants a day — an unprecedented pace ICE is still trying to reach.
- Its detention facilities — about 41,000 beds — are far past capacity as DHS continues to seek more detention space in the U.S. and abroad.
The intrigue: If Trump’s big bill isn’t passed soon, he could use his authority to declare a national emergency to redirect money to ICE from elsewhere in the government — similar to what he did in 2020 to divert nearly $4 billion in Pentagon funds to his border wall project.
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“I have a feeling they’re going to grant themselves an exception apportionment, use the life and safety exception, and just keep burning money,” a former federal budget official told Axios.
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“You could imagine a new emergency declaration that pertains to interior enforcement that would trigger the same kind of emergency personnel mobilization statutes,” said Chris Marisola, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center and a former lawyer for the Defense Department.
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“These statutory authorities authorizing the president to declare emergencies” … unlock “a whole host of other authorities for these departments and agencies [that] are often written incredibly broadly and invest a lot of discretion in the president,” Marisola added.
Everything he wants is a national emergency to this guy. He’s a toddler. Give him a blankie and a Nuk! I suppose we’re going to the courts some more for lessons in the U.S. Constitution.
One of the big stories that’s never in the mainstream news is that researchers are looking for other places to carry on their work, and Europe is happily recruiting them. France is making a big effort to attract the kinds of minds that used to flee to the U.S. for freedom, knowledge, and research funding. This is turning into something more than just a brain drain. It’s blowing up our entire Brain Trust, which is the number one thing we’ve excelled at in the world. We fund innovation and encourage it. Well, not anymore.
Nature, one of the two premier science research publishers in this country, has an intriguing article about the search to move researchers out of the United States. “Some US researchers want to leave the country. Can Europe take them? As the Trump administration steps up attacks on US universities and scientific institutions, the European Union is campaigning hard to attract scientists from the United States. But how many can the bloc take?”
In early May, European politicians and university leaders gathered in Paris at Sorbonne University to deliver a message to US researchers affected by cuts made by the administration of US President Donald Trump: move here instead.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and French President Emmanuel Macron announced a 2-year funding package worth €500 million (US$571 million) to support researchers who want to move to the continent, as part of a scheme named Choose Europe.
Although von der Leyen didn’t name the United States or its president explicitly at the 5 May gathering, she said that parts of the world were questioning “free and open research”, describing that attitude as a “gigantic miscalculation”.
In April, the French government announced that money from the country’s €54-billion France 2030 strategic investment initiative had been set aside to fund international researchers who would like to work in France. Macron confirmed at the Sorbonne meeting that the separate €100-million cash boost would fund half of the costs of scientific projects involving international researchers moving to France.
We’ve already discussed how many US professors have left for Canada. Here’s an interview from the pair we featured earlier. This is especially true of those who specialize in research around democratic backsliding and fascist takeovers in formerly democratic countries. This new Interview from The Guardian. It’s authored by Jonathan Freedland. “Why a professor of fascism left the US: ‘The lesson of 1933 is – you get out’.” If only I could. I’ve even searched for universities in France.
She finds the whole idea absurd. To Prof Marci Shore, the notion that the Guardian, or anyone else, should want to interview her about the future of the US is ridiculous. She’s an academic specialising in the history and culture of eastern Europe and describes herself as a “Slavicist”, yet here she is, suddenly besieged by international journalists keen to ask about the country in which she insists she has no expertise: her own. “It’s kind of baffling,” she says.
In fact, the explanation is simple enough. Last month, Shore, together with her husband and fellow scholar of European history, Timothy Snyder, and the academic Jason Stanley, made news around the world when they announced that they were moving from Yale University in the US to the University of Toronto in Canada. It was not the move itself so much as their motive that garnered attention. As the headline of a short video op-ed the trio made for the New York Times put it, “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the US”.
Starkly, Shore invoked the ultimate warning from history. “The lesson of 1933 is: you get out sooner rather than later.” She seemed to be saying that what had happened then, in Germany, could happen now, in Donald Trump’s America – and that anyone tempted to accuse her of hyperbole or alarmism was making a mistake. “My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, ‘We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.’ I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying, ‘Our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship.’ And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”
Since Shore, Snyder and Stanley announced their plans, the empirical evidence has rather moved in their favour. Whether it was the sight of tanks transported into Washington DC ahead of the military parade that marked Trump’s birthday last Saturday or the deployment of the national guard to crush protests in Los Angeles, alongside marines readied for the same task,recent days have brought the kind of developments that could serve as a dramatist’s shorthand for the slide towards fascism.
“It’s all almost too stereotypical,” Shore reflects. “A 1930s-style military parade as a performative assertion of the Führerprinzip,” she says, referring to the doctrine established by Adolf Hitler, locating all power in the dictator. “As for Los Angeles, my historian’s intuition is that sending in the national guard is a provocation that will be used to foment violence and justify martial law. The Russian word of the day here could be provokatsiia.”
Let’s read about a different angle.
The introduction to Chaplin’s speech is written on the SubStack of Oliver Marcus Malloy. Since many Holocaust survivors compare Trump’s pogroms to Hitler, it’s a good chance to see this classic movie again.
The Great Dictator (1940), directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin, is a satirical comedy that mocks Adolf Hitler and fascism.
Chaplin plays dual roles: a ruthless dictator named Adenoid Hynkel and a kind-hearted Jewish barber, who looks just like the dictator.
As Hynkel plots world domination, the barber, mistaken for the dictator, delivers a powerful speech advocating peace and unity.
The film blends slapstick humor with poignant political commentary, offering a timeless critique of tyranny and intolerance.
Meanwhile, Trump’s foreign policy continues to threaten world stability as everyone considers him and the United States as useless fools these days.
So yes, Reuters reports that Russia has entered the hot war between Iran and Israel, initiated by Israel. “Russia urges Israeli restraint, says Iran has right to defend itself.” Also reported by Reuters is this headline. “Russia says US has cancelled next round of talks on easing tensions,”
Russia said on Monday that the United States had cancelled the next round of talks between the two countries, an apparent setback in a process launched by presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump to improve bilateral ties.
In a statement, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova did not say if Washington had given any reason for the break in the talks, which began after Trump returned to the White House in January.
We cannot afford a bimbo for President who drifts from one policy approach to another. It’s fucking dangerous to the country and to our allies. I usually have a strict no video of Yam Tits and defintely not with him speaking rule, but I’m putting this up. It’s short, at least. Trump is in Canada today for the G7 meetings. You can see the enthusiasm in the Canadian PM’s face as Trump announces he’s a “tariff guy.” He thinks the PM’s ideas on the economy are complete,x so they’re going to look at both. The PM of Canada is a fucking economist you moron!
Here are some links to follow the G7 summit.
From the BBC: “Trump says expelling Russia from G7 was a ‘mistake’ as he meets Carney.”
From NBC: Live updates: “Trump meets with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at G7 summit amid trade tensions. The president said he expected to reach new trade agreements at the summit.”
From Fortune: “G7 summit in Canada won’t release a joint statement as world leaders focus on not riling a Trump they disagree with.”
From AP News: “G7 leaders want to contain the Israel-Iran conflict, as Trump calls for talks between the countries.”
I guess we’re not the only ones who desperately want to get rid of him for good. I can only imagine what the footage will look like during the news this evening.
So, it’s continually raining here. There was a crack of lightning last night that made the sky white, and the sound was so loud that Temple, while scrambling to hide under my desk, fell out of bed. I’ve had to lift her back up to the bed several times now. We’re going to the vet this afternoon for her annual. I think she’s just a little store. She’s walking around the house.
The Rooster has a girlfriend in a house 3 doors down from me. She’s caged him in the backyard and fenced in with a thick horizontal wood fence, but he sits at the same spot every morning just to be close to her.
The outdoor kitty still comes for breakfast. I’m not sure if she’s bringing friends, but an entire cup of food disappears pretty quickly.
I’m still here in New Orleans. I didn’t make it to the protest yesterday, but here’s the one in the Marigny neighborhood, which is next to mine. Have a good week!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Mostly Monday Reads: The Wag the Dog, Gaslighting #FARTUS
Posted: June 9, 2025 Filed under: "presidential immunity", #FARTUS, democracy is threatened, Democratic Backsliding, FARTUS, ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement, impeach trump, January 6 Committee Public Hearings, MAGA Domestic Terrorism, MAGA goes after the Rule of Law, Protests Against ICE Raids | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, Gaslighting, Ice Protests, ICE raids, J6 insurrection, Kent State, L.A. Protests, Rodney King, US Entergy Polluters Study, Wag the Dog 7 Comments
“I think White House Goebbels cracked a smile.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s another record-breaking heat and humidity day in the Big Easy. I’m doing my part of taking it easy by hanging out under a ceiling fan and a tower fan. I always feel like I should be growing gills on days like this as an evolutionary measure. It’s hard to be in climate change denial down here, but I still see folks thinking it’s just a bit of odd weather. Summers are always hot, you know. While checking for other headlines, I found this one at The Guardian. I wanted to put it up top here before I get carried away by the L.A. protests. “Trump’s EP to claim power-plant emissions ‘not significant’ – but study says otherwise, US power sector would be world’s sixth largest emitter of planet-heating greenhouse gas if it were a country – study.”
Donald Trump’s administration is set to claim planet-heating pollution spewing from US power plants is so globally insignificant it should be spared any sort of climate regulation.
But, in fact, the volume of these emissions is stark – if the US power sector were a country, it would be the sixth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reportedly drafted a plan to delete all restrictions on greenhouse gases coming from coal and gas-fired power plants in the US because they “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” and are a tiny and shrinking share of the overall global emissions that are driving the climate crisis.
However, a new analysis shows that the emissions from American fossil-fuel plants are prominent on a global scale, having contributed 5% of all planet-heating pollution since 1990. If it were a country, the US power sector would be the sixth largest emitter in the world, eclipsing the annual emissions from all sources in Japan, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Canada, among other nations.
“That seems rather significant to me,” said Jason Schwartz, co-author of the report from New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. “If this administration wants to argue only China has significant emissions they can try to do that, but a court will review that, and under any reasonable interpretation will find that US power plant emissions are significant too.”
Fossil fuel-derived electricity is responsible for the second largest source of emissions in the US, behind transportation. No country in history has caused more carbon pollution than America, and while its power sector’s emissions have declined somewhat in recent years, largely through a market-based decline in heavily-polluting coal, it remains a major driver of the climate crisis.
The cocktail of toxins emitted by power plants have a range of impacts, the NYU analysis points out. A single year of emissions in 2022 will cause 5,300 deaths in the US from air pollution over many decades, along with climate impacts that will result in global damages of $370bn, including $225bn in global health damages and $75bn in lost labor productivity.
“We were surprised when we ran the numbers just how quickly these deaths start tallying up,” said Schwartz. “All of these harms stack up on top of each other. Climate change will be the most important public health issue this century and we can’t just ignore the US power sector’s contribution to that public health crisis.”
Last night, I watched BBC Live again for decent coverage of the L.A. Riots. I haven’t been this reliant on UK-based media since the Nixon Days. I woke up to lots of complaints on social media posts about the coverage of the Cable News presentation. I luckily found BBC Live after seeing reruns of old news programs on both MSNBC and CNN. The main channels had sporadic coverage. It was old-fashioned style coverage where the reporter at the scene reported, and the guy or girl in the chair asked questions. Reporters from the UK (Nick Stern), Xinhua, China, and Australia were hit. Australian Reporter Lauren Thompson from 9News was on air when a police officer aimed and fired at her legs.
9News reporter has been caught in the crossfire of chaotic protests that have engulfed parts of Los Angeles.
US correspondent Lauren Tomasi was shot in the leg with a rubber bullet fired by a police officer who was standing guard in the city’s downtown district.
It happened on the third day of violent protests that erupted in the US’s second-most populous city in response to sweeping arrests of alleged illegal immigrants.
Tomasi was struck as she reported live near the front line of the protests surrounding the city’s metropolitan detention centre.
Just seconds after she wrapped up a live cross to Australia, one of the officers turned his gun towards Tomasi and fired at her from close range.
She yelled in pain before the camera turned away. Tomasi was left sore but otherwise unharmed.
You may watch their footage at the link. Several reporters at the scene have complained that the L.A. Police had targeted them even though they were clearly wearing clothing and helmets identifying them as press. Yam Tits sent the California National Guard to the scene even though neither Mayor Bass or Governor Newsome had asked for the Guard to be activated. There are clear legal problems with this, and the Governor is acting on them.
Trump failed to send the National Guard at the time of the J6 insurrection despite pleas from Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and others. Of course, he was basically the cause of the riots and attack on the Capitol and its Police. “Trump could have helped response to Jan. 6 riot — but didn’t — per new testimony. Two senior leaders of the D.C. guard at the time of the Capitol attack painted a picture of the boost that never came, according to transcripts reviewed by POLITICO.”
AXIOS has the story on the Newsome lawsuits. “California to sue Trump administration amid LA protest standoff, Newsom says.” Avery Lotz has the lede.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a Monday post that California will sue President Trump, saying he “illegally acted” to federalize the National Guard during protests against federal immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.
The big picture: Trump on Saturday signed a memorandum calling in the National Guard — despite opposition from the state’s and the city’s Democratic leadership.
Driving the news: Newsom, after saying Sunday that the Golden State would be taking Trump to court, wrote in a Monday X post that the president had “flamed the fires.”
- He added, “The order he signed doesn’t just apply to CA. It will allow him to go into ANY STATE and do the same thing. We’re suing him.”
- Trump’s order cited “[n]umerous incidents of violence and disorder” and “violent protests” but did not specifically mention California or the Los Angeles area.
The other side: “Gavin Newsom’s feckless leadership is directly responsible for the lawless riots and violent attacks on law enforcement in Los Angeles,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement provided to Axios.
- Jackson continued, “Instead of filing baseless lawsuits meant to score political points with his left-wing base, Newsom should focus on protecting Americans by restoring law and order to his state.”
Friction point: Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other Democrats have argued Trump’s deployment of the National Guard was an unnecessary escalation, while Trump administration officials have railed against their leadership.
- Border czar Tom Homan did not rule out arrests for Democratic officials in the state should they impede law enforcement or harbor undocumented immigrants in a Saturday interview with NBC News, but said he does not believe Bass had “crossed the line yet.”
- “Come and get me, tough guy,” Newsom wrote in response.
- Homan, in a Monday morning interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” argued the NBC report was “dishonest.”
- “I was clear they haven’t crossed the line,” Homan said Monday. “But they’re not above the law either.”
- “I was clear they haven’t crossed the line,” Homan said Monday. “But they’re not above the law either.”
Zoom in: Hegseth in his Monday post included a clip from an interview with commentator Brian Tyler Cohen in which the governor described Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as “a joke” and characterized Trump as “unhinged.”
- “This is a preview for things to come,” he said. “This isn’t about LA, per se. It’s about us today, it’s about you, everyone watching, tomorrow.”
Context: Trump’s Saturday memorandum, which called into federal service some 2,000 National Guard personnel for 60 days, cited rarely used federal powers and sidestepped Newsom.
“That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions,” Newsom said in a statement.
David R Lurie–writing at the Substack Public Notice–has this headline this morning. “A felon in the White House is making crime legal. Meanwhile, he’s creating fake crimes to punish the law-abiding.”
Trumpists have resorted to inventing new offenses so as to transform law-abiding immigrants into criminals. For example, Trump has declared slivers of land along the border to be “military zones” for the sole purpose of charging migrants with trespassing. The administration has also declared that undocumented immigrants have an obligation to “register” with the government so they can be indicted for failing to do so. They’re jailing immigrants who legally entered the United States under a Biden-era asylum law by retroactively declaring the program to be “illegal.”
Most tellingly, and insidiously, ICE agents desperate to meet the increasing quotas the White House has set for deporting “illegals” have taken to targeting the most vulnerable immigrants: Those intent on following the law and engaging in productive work.
As Sen. Markwayne Mullin put it on CNN yesterday, “regardless of what they may be doing right now” — including whether they are abiding by the law and are gainfully employed — undocumented persons “are illegal and they are criminals.”
It’s become routine for gangs of ICE goons to gather at immigration courts and arrest immigrants who are following the law by showing up for hearings. Immigration judges, cowed into facilitating Trump’s mass deportation schemes, have been dutifully dismissing cases so as to allow the immigrants to be immediately jailed as “illegals.” In one recent case, armed thugs dragged into an elevator an immigrant who had fainted after they had swooped in to grab her while her attorney was in the restroom.
State courts have also become favored hunting zones for ICE. Judges who have the temerity to point out that this tactic discourages immigrants from complying with court orders, and thus the law, are being threatened. Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, for example, was jailed and indicted on the flimsiest of criminal charges for allegedly helping a man evade ICE. Her indictment has been decried by other jurists as a “threat [to] public trust in the judicial system and the ability of the public to avail themselves of courthouses without fear of reprisal.”
ICE gangs are also now routinely assembling in restaurants and other places of work, often bearing submachine guns, cuffing everyone in sight, and jailing some, simply on suspicion of being “illegals.” Recently, a gang of armed and masked ICE officers terrified patrons and workers in a San Diego restaurant, and even cuffed the manager. The rifle-toting “law enforcement” officers retreated from the scene by shooting flash bang grenades into a crowd of citizens distressed by their misconduct. (They only managed to arrest two “illegals.”)
Despite the fact that Trump has had to resort to fabricating new crimes to turn law-abiding immigrants into targets for deportation, the GOP is now about to make ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” includes over $150 billion for immigration enforcement and seeks to make ICE the most highly funded law enforcement agency in the United States.
And as Trump’s threats about a military invasion of Los Angeles County, which appeared to be commencing through the use of federalized National Guard units as this piece was being prepared for publication Sunday evening, demonstrate that his administration is intent on using its growing immigration “law enforcement” apparatus to wreak havoc in America’s cities, and to threaten to make peaceful protest a crime.
Brian Stelter from CNN has this odd headline. “Dr. Phil was embedded with ICE during controversial Los Angeles immigration raids.” What the actual Hell is this? This is absolutely the “reality” show administration!
As federal agents prepared to fan out in Los Angeles for a controversial immigration crackdown, the officers were greeted by a familiar face: Dr. Phil McGraw.
The television personality and his camera crew were on hand before and after the raids that took place on Friday and triggered several days of street protests.
McGraw was there “to get a first-hand look at the targeted operations,” according to his conservative TV channel, MeritTV.
McGraw also had “exclusive” access to Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, a spokesperson for the channel said. The two men sat down for taped conversations about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts both “the day before and day after the LA operation.”
The TV personality and Homan were also together at the Homeland Security Investigations field office in L.A. on the morning the raids began.
McGraw’s presence on the ground in L.A. reinforces the made-for-TV nature of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The former daytime talk show host was embedded with ICE officials in Chicago back in January, when some federal agents were told to be camera-ready for a show of force at the very start of President Trump’s second term.
A MeritTV spokesperson said this time was different, however. “In order to not escalate any situation, Dr. Phil McGraw did not join and was not embedded” during the L.A. raids, the channel spokesperson said.
Instead, he hung out at the field office and had face time with Homan. The conversations will air on “Dr. Phil Primetime” on Monday and Tuesday night.
Evidently, The New Republic and I are sympatico. “What the Hell Was Dr. Phil Doing at the ICE Raids in Los Angeles? As if things weren’t already bad enough, Trump’s pseudo-doctor lackey is fanning the flames in California.” They’re evidently going on a full-scale propaganda pogrom. The New York Times‘ Billy Witz remembers a different protest in 1992. “When the National Guard Went to L.A. in 1992, the Situation Was Far Different. The skirmishes with immigration agents of the past few days are dwarfed by the widespread rioting, vandalism, and violence that engulfed whole neighborhoods in 1992.” Republicans have been displaying selective memory all day. I’ve read assertions that it was Nancy Pelosi’s fault that the National Guard wasn’t called during J6. And that Trump had called up like 2000 troops. As I demonstrated in the top link, these things are on film and debunked all over the place but it doesn’t stop Yam Tits’ Cult and their low information mindsets.
Some Republicans have drawn parallels between President Trump’s dispatching of National Guard troops to Los Angeles on Saturday and what happened in 1992, when soldiers and Marines were sent to the Los Angeles area to restore order after the Rodney King riots.
But that was a far different situation.
In contrast with the isolated skirmishes seen in Los Angeles County over the past few days, there were neighborhoods in 1992 that had devolved into something resembling a lawless dystopia. Drivers were pulled from cars and beaten. Buildings were burned. Businesses were looted. In all, 63 people died during the riots, including nine who were shot by the police.
The mayhem, which went on for six days, was rooted in Black residents’ anger over years of police brutality. It ignited after four officers were found not guilty of using excessive force against Mr. King, a Black motorist who had been pulled over after a high-speed chase, even though videotape evidence clearly showed the officers brutally beating him. That anger had erupted before, notably in the Watts riots of 1965.
The violence in 1992 was also fueled by tensions between the Black and Korean American communities in the area, and by the shooting death of a Black girl by a Korean American shopkeeper. It got so far out of control that major-league sports events were postponed or moved to safer locations, dusk-to-dawn curfews were imposed, schools were closed and mail delivery was withheld in some neighborhoods.
On the third day of the violence, President George H.W. Bush activated the National Guard at the request of Gov. Pete Wilson and Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles. Thousands of Army and Marine troops were sent into Los Angeles as well. Caravans including Humvees and other armored vehicles rolled into the city along the freeways.
The protests of 2025 bear little if any comparison to the widespread upheaval and violence of 1992. The protesters have directed their anger mainly at ICE agents, not at fellow residents, and the demonstrations have so far done relatively little damage to buildings or businesses.
I agree with Robert Reich writing for The Guardian. “We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state. The national guard’s deployment in Los Angeles sets the US on a familiar authoritarian pathway. History shows the results.” We have nationwide protests coming up this Saturday, the 14th. I’m sure the world will be watching.
Now that Donald Trump’s tariffs have been halted, his big, beautiful bill has been stymied, and his multi-billionaire tech bro has turned on him, how does he demonstrate his power?
On Friday morning, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) conducted raids across Los Angeles – including at two Home Depots and a clothing wholesaler – in search of workers who they suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
Though figures vary, they reportedly arrested 121 people.
They were met with protesters who chanted and threw eggs before being dispersed by police wearing riot gear, holding shields, and using batons, guns that shoot pepper balls, rubber bullets, teargas, and flash-bang grenades.
On Saturday, Trump escalated the confrontations, ordering at least 2,000 national guard troops to be deployed in Los Angeles county to help quell the protests.
He said that any demonstration that got in the way of immigration officials would be considered a “form of rebellion.” Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, called the protests an “insurrection”.
On Saturday evening, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, threatened to deploy active-duty marines, saying: “The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil. A dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK. Under President Trump, violence and destruction against federal agents and federal facilities will NOT be tolerated.”
We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state.
Last week, raids in San Diego, in Martha’s Vineyard and in the Berkshires led to standoffs as bystanders angrily confronted federal agents who were taking workers into custody.
Trump’s dragnet also includes federal courthouses. Ice officers are mobilizing outside courtrooms across the US and immediately arresting people – including migrants whose cases have been dismissed by judges.
History shows that once an authoritarian ruler establishes the infrastructure of a police state, that same infrastructure can be turned on anyone.
Trump and his regime are rapidly creating such an infrastructure, in five steps:
(1) declaring an emergency on the basis of a so-called “rebellion”, “insurrection”, or “invasion”;
(2) using that “emergency” to justify bringing in federal agents with a monopoly on the use of force (Ice, the FBI, DEA, and the national guard) against civilians inside the country;
(3) allowing those militarized agents to make dragnet abductions and warrantless arrests, and detain people without due process;
(4) creating additional prison space and detention camps for those detained, and
(5) eventually, as the situation escalates, declaring martial law.
We are not at martial law yet, thankfully. But once in place, the infrastructure of a police state can build on itself.
Those who are given authority over aspects of it – the internal militia, dragnets, detention camps, and martial law – seek other opportunities to invoke their authority.
Rebecca Solnit has this to add at her Meditations in an Emergency Blog. “Some Notes on the City of Angels and the Nature of Violence.”
I think maybe it’s begun, the bigger fiercer backlash against the Trump Administration which is itself a violent backlash against every good thing that’s happened over the past several decades – the advance of rights for nature, women, children, indigenous peoples, BIPOC and immigrants/refugees, queer people, trans people, people with disabilities, workers, the right of us all to be free from being poisoned by food, water, air. It began in Los Angeles, the city of angels, a city of almost four million people, almost half of them Latino, in a region of almost twelve million that two thousand California National Guards cannot and will not subjugate. All they can do is punish and incite, and I hope that some of the protesters are telling them they’re violating their mission and maybe the law. In the nonwhite-majority state of California, which recently advanced to become the fourth-largest economy in the world.
We are escalating because they are escalating. But as a smart guy on BlueSky noted, he’s “seeing a massive divide online between Angelenos of all political stripes who understand that the protests in LA yesterday were mostly peaceful and any violence was ICE-initiated and East Coast establishment liberals lecturing ‘the left’ on how riots just amplify right wing talking points.” This is familiar ground, the idea that no matter what the right does, however much the systematic violence harms us, however horrible a police murder or another violation of human rights such as ICE’s grabbing people off the street, we have the responsibility to remain not just peaceful but peaceful in a way that pleases our enemies. It becomes collective responsibility and collective guilt because even if a few people in a few places torch something or break something, it’s supposed to indict the whole movement, and has often been used to justify more institutional violence.
Her,e it’s also useful to make a distinction between property damage (which protesters in the USA in our era have done from time to time) and harming living beings (which is largely something done by law enforcement in these demonstrations). Property destruction can be dramatic theater (suffragists in early twentieth-century London broke all the plate glass windows on a stretch of shopping street; no living beings were at risk), can be actual protection (the firefighters taking an axe to the door to rescue the people from the blaze), or acts of intimidation (the husband breaking the furniture to convey to his wife he can break her too). All I’ve read about so far in L.A. is property damage by protesters, while we’ve seen many kinds of violence and intimidation from the heavily armored and armed thugs serving the Trump Administration’s war on immigrants.”
These are indeed Dark Times.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: June 7, 2025 Filed under: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement, immigration | Tags: "Big Beautiful Bill", House budget bill, ICE raids, Kilmar Abreago Garcia, Los Angeles, Medicaid, NASA, social safety net, Social Security, Trump-Musk breakup 11 Comments
Their Cat, by Pauline Bewick
Good Afternoon!!
The epic spat between Trump and Musk is still dominating the media landscape, but that childish story should get some competition soon from the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S. The Trump administration finally decided to bring him back after they invented some “crimes” to charge him with and took them to a grand jury in Tennessee. The trumped up charges led a long-time prosecutor there to abruptly resign. Meanwhile, even though Musk is gone, DOGE is still working to steal all our private data. On the ICE/mass deportation front, Los Angeles looked like a war zone yesterday.
I’ll get to each of these stories, beginning with Abrego Garcia.
The Return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia
CNN: Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been returned to the United States to face criminal charges.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March, has been returned to the United States to face federal criminal charges, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday.
For months, the Trump administration has been locked in an intense standoff with the federal judiciary over court orders for the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador, where he was mistakenly deported in mid-March, in a situation that one federal judge warned could present an “incipient crisis” between the two branches.
Abrego Garcia has been indicted on two criminal counts in the Middle District of Tennessee: conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain.
The indictment unsealed Friday afternoon accuses Abrego Garcia and others of partaking in a conspiracy in recent years in which they “knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens who had no authorization to be present in the United States, and many of whom were MS-13 members and associates.”
Abrego Garcia and his family say he fled gang violence in El Salvador and have denied allegations he’s associated with MS-13.
The White House and the State Department made the decision to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney for Abrego Garcia, accused the Trump administration of “playing games” with the legal system and said his client should appear in immigration court, not criminal court.
“The government disappeared Kilmar to a foreign prison in violation of a court order. Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they’re bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him. This shows that they were playing games with the court all along,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said in a statement to CNN. “Due process means the chance to defend yourself before you’re punished, not after. This is an abuse of power, not justice.”
The alleged “crimes”:
The allegations date back to 2016 and involve a half-dozen alleged unnamed co-conspirators, with one, identified as CC-6 of Guatemala, described as being a “primary sources of supply of undocumented aliens for the conspiracy.”
Man with cat, Theresa Tanner
The conspiracy allegations outline how, over the years, Abrego Garcia and others worked to move undocumented aliens between Texas and Maryland and other states more than 100 times.
Working with another co-conspirator, referred to as CC-1, Abrego Garcia and that unnamed individual “ordinarily picked up the undocumented aliens in the Houston, Texas area after the aliens had unlawfully crossed the Southern border of the United States from Mexico,” the indictment said.
The two “then transported the undocumented aliens from Texas to other parts of the United States to further the aliens’ unlawful presence in the United States.”
You can read more details on the trumped up charges at the CNN link.
ABC News: Abrego Garcia indictment led top federal prosecutor in Tennessee to resign: Sources.
The decision to pursue the indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia led to the abrupt departure of Ben Schrader, a high-ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee, sources briefed on Schrader’s decision told ABC News.
Schrader’s resignation was prompted by concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons, the sources said.
Schrader, who spent 15 years in the U.S. A
ttorney’s Office in Nashville, and was most recently the chief of the criminal division, did not respond to messages from ABC News seeking comment.
Analysis by Alan Feuer at The New York Times (gift link): Return of Wrongly Deported Man Raises Questions About Trump’s Views of Justice.
When Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Friday that Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia had been returned to the United States to face criminal charges after being wrongfully deported to a prison in El Salvador, she sought to portray the move as the White House dutifully upholding the rule of law.
“This,” she said, “is what American justice looks like.”
Her assertion, however, failed to grapple with the fact that for the nearly three months before the Justice Department secured an indictment against Mr. Abrego Garcia, it had repeatedly flouted a series of court orders — including one from the Supreme Court — to “facilitate” his release.
While the indictment filed against Mr. Abrego Garcia contained serious allegations, accusing him of taking part in a conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants as a member of the street gang MS-13, it had no bearing on the issues that have sat at the heart of the case since his summary expulsion in March.
Those were whether Mr. Abrego Garcia had received due process when he was plucked off the streets without a warrant and expelled days later to a prison in El Salvador, in what even Trump officials have repeatedly admitted was an error. And, moreover, whether administration officials should be held in contempt for repeatedly stonewalling a judge’s effort to get to the bottom of their actions.
Well before Mr. Abrego Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit seeking to force the White House to release him from El Salvador, administration officials had tried all means at their disposal to keep him overseas as they figured out a solution to the problem they had created, The New York Times found in a recent investigation.
Will Barnet, Interlude
Feuer discusses the Trump administration’s machinations:
In the days before the administration’s error was made public, officials at the Department of Homeland Security discussed portraying Mr. Abrego Garcia as a “leader” of MS-13, even though they could find no evidence to support the claim. They considered ways to nullify the original order that had barred his deportation to El Salvador. And they sought to downplay the danger he might face in one of that country’s most notorious prisons.
To Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, it was no surprise that the same officials who had fought so hard against securing his return suddenly agreed to bring him back to U.S. soil after they had obtained an indictment that bolstered the story they had been telling from the start.
“Today’s action proves what we’ve known all along — that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so,” said Andrew Rossman, one of the lawyers. “It’s now up to our judicial system to see that Mr. Abrego Garcia receives the due process that the Constitution guarantees.”
Questions have already been raised about the criminal case, filed in Federal District Court in Nashville. There was concern and disagreement in recent weeks among prosecutors about how to proceed with the charges, two people familiar with the matter said, leading to the resignation of a supervisor in the federal prosecutor’s office handling the case.
Use the gift link to read the whole article. You can also read Marcy Wheeler’s take on the indictment at Emptywheel.
The Trump-Musk Split
There are gossipy article at the NYT, the WaPo, and the Atlantic.
Tyler Pager, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, Theodore Schleifer, and Ryan Mac at The New York Times: Buildup to a Meltdown: How the Trump-Musk Alliance Collapsed.
Just minutes before he walked into the Oval Office for a televised send-off for Elon Musk last week, an aide had handed him a file.
The papers showed that Mr. Trump’s nominee to run NASA — a close associate of Mr. Musk’s — had donated to prominent Democrats in recent years, including some who Mr. Trump was learning about for the first time.
The president set his outrage aside and mustered through a cordial public farewell. But as soon as the cameras left the Oval Office, the president confronted Mr. Musk. He started to read some of the donations out loud, shaking his head.
This was not good, the president said.
Artist Luis Garces Bonhemio y el gato
Mr. Musk, who was sporting a black eye that he blamed on a punch from his young son, tried to explain. He said Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur who was set to become the next NASA administrator, cared about getting things done. Yes, he had donated to Democrats, but so had a lot of people.
Maybe it’s a good thing, Mr. Musk told the president — it shows that you’re willing to hire people of all stripes.
But Mr. Trump was unmoved. He said that people don’t change. These are the types of people who will turn, he said, and it won’t end up being good for us.
The moment of pique was a signal of the simmering tensions between the two men that would explode into the open less than a week later, upending what had been one of the most extraordinary alliances in American politics.
That’s the NYT take. Obviously, having a friend as head of NASA would be very good for Musk’s businesses.
Cat Zakrzewski, Natalie Allison, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Jeff Stein, and Emily Davies at The Washington Post (gift link): Inside the battles that shattered Trump and Musk’s alliance.
For once, President Donald Trump was trying to be the adult in the room.
Trump and Elon Musk, two billionaires with massive egos and combustible temperaments, had forged an unlikely friendship over the past year, one built on proximity, political expediency, and, yes, a touch of genuine warmth. Relations between the president and his top benefactor had grown somewhat strained in recent weeks, as Trump began to feel that Musk had overstayed his welcome in the West Wing. Musk had suggested privately that he could stay on at the White House, an offer that Trump gently declined, two people familiar with the situation told us. (They, like others we talked with for this story, spoke anonymously in order to share candid details about a sensitive feud.) But Musk was still given a gracious send-off last Friday—complete with a large golden, albeit ceremonial, key—aimed at keeping the mercurial tech baron more friend than foe.
Will Barnet, The Closed Window
The peace didn’t last even a week.
On Tuesday, Musk took to X to attack the Republican spending bill being debated in the Senate, trashing Trump’s signature piece of legislation as “a disgusting abomination.” Even as the White House tried to downplay any differences, Musk couldn’t let go of his grievances—the exclusion of electric-vehicle tax credits from the bill, and Trump’s rejection of Musk’s pick to run NASA.
Yesterday, the planet’s richest man attacked its most powerful. Each took aim at the other from their respective social-media platform, forcing rubberneckers into a madcap toggle between Truth Social and X. Trump deemed his former aide “CRAZY,” while Musk went much further, dramatically escalating the feud by calling for Trump’s impeachment, suggesting that the president had been part of Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious sex-trafficking ring, and—likely worst of all in Trump’s mind—taking credit for the president’s election in November.
For one day, Musk made X great again. The spectacle seemed to subside today, as Trump showed—at least by his standards—some restraint. The president insisted that he was not thinking about Musk and wanted only to pass the reconciliation bill that had featured in the brawl. Musk, meanwhile, has far more to lose: his newfound stardom within the MAGA movement, his personal wealth, and government contracts worth billions to his businesses.
Steven Bannon, the influential Trump adviser who has long been critical of Musk, crowed that the tech billionaire’s attacks on Trump were so personal that he won’t be forgiven by the MAGA crowd. “Only the fanboys are going to stick with him—he’s a man without a country,” Bannon told us.
Use the gift link to read the whole thing if you’re intersted.
Greg Sargent strips away the gossip and gets to the meat of the Trump-Musk disagreements at The New Republic: The Real Reason for the Trump-Musk Feud is Uglier Than You Think.
As the war between Donald Trump and Elon Musk worsens, what’s truly odd about this whole spectacle is that the actual substantive disagreement between them seems to be of little interest to media observers. And when you strip away the trolling and shitposting, here’s what becomes clear: This is really a battle over how comprehensively to screw over poor and working people, largely to the benefit of the wealthy.
The superficial argument between them, of course, is over Musk’s opposition to the “big, beautiful bill” that the House passed and that Trump wants the Senate to adopt. That opposition is rooted in Musk’s claim that the bill is loaded with “pork” and will explode the deficit. Trump, meanwhile, is infuriated by Musk because he can’t brook criticism and wants the bill to pass to notch a victory.
But the respective positions underlying those stances are mysteriously missing from the whole Trump-Musk discourse. Flush them into the open, and it helps illuminate the true spectrum of the MAGA movement’s ideological goals—and why its “pro-worker populist” pretensions are so thoroughly phony.
The House GOP bill would entail a large upward transfer of resources. The bill, which would continue Trump’s 2017 tax law and add new tax giveaways for wealthy investors, heirs, and others, would deliver a big tax cut to those in the highest income brackets. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the tax cuts enjoyed by those in the bottom 20 percent in 2027 would be one seven-hundredth the size of those reaped by the top 1 percent.
By Theresa Tanner
Worse, those relative table scraps for the bottom could be erased by other changes. The bill’s massive cuts to Medicaid and other health care changes would result in over 10 million people losing health insurance. Add in other cuts to the safety net, and you see why the bill ultimately would lower household resources for the bottom 10 percent while raising them for the top 10 percent—a sizable redistribution upward. As Paul Krugman notes, the bill’s “cruelty is exceptional even by right wing standards.”
Musk is angry about the $2.4 trillion those changes would add to the debt. But, crucially, he’s said little—if anything—about the role that those tax cuts for the rich would have in that outcome. He is primarily obsessed with the bill’s “pork,” meaning that he wants the bill to cut more spending—much, much more.
Where would that money come from? Musk’s cuts via his Department of Government Efficiency have already decimated foreign aid and other programs, producing more starvation, disease, and death among the global poor. Given that DOGE searched for “waste, fraud, and abuse” and found very little, if Musk wants massive additional cuts, by definition they would fall more heavily on important government programs, almost certainly ones that low-income Americans rely upon.
Another way to say this is that their real difference is over how far to push the “waste, fraud, and abuse” scam.
Read the rest at TNR.
What DOGE Is Up To
The New York Times: After His Trump Blowup, Musk May Be Out. But DOGE Is Just Getting Started.
Elon Musk’s blowup with President Trump may have doomed Washington’s most potent partnership, but the billionaire’s signature cost-cutting project has become deeply embedded in Mr. Trump’s administration and could be there to stay.
At the Department of Energy, for example, a former member of the Department of Government Efficiency is now serving as the chief of staff.
At the Interior Department, DOGE members have been converted into federal employees and embedded into the agency, said a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. And at the Environmental Protection Agency, where a spokeswoman said that there are two senior officials associated with the DOGE mission, work continues apace on efforts to dismantle an agency that Mr. Trump has long targeted.
“They are still internally going forward; we don’t really feel as if anything has stopped here,” said Nicole Cantello, a former lawyer for the E.P.A. who represents its union in Chicago.
Whether DOGE keeps its current Musk-inspired form remains an open question. Some DOGE members on Friday expressed concern that the president could choose to retaliate against Mr. Musk by firing people associated with the initiative. Others could choose to leave on their own, following Mr. Musk out the door. And DOGE’s role, even its legality, remain the subject of legal battles amid questions over its attempts to use sensitive government data.
But the approach that DOGE embodied at the outset — deep cuts in spending, personnel and projects — appears to have taken root.
Even with Mr. Musk on the sidelines, DOGE on Friday notched two legal victories. The Supreme Court said that it can have access to sensitive Social Security data and ruled that, for now, the organization does not have to turn over internal records to a government watchdog group as part of a public records lawsuit.
Yes, the Supreme Court has struck again.
NBC News: Supreme Court allows DOGE to access Social Security data.
The Supreme Court on Friday allowed members of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency to access Social Security Administration data.
By Will Barnet
The conservative-majority court, with its three liberal justices objecting, granted an emergency application filed by the Trump administration asking the justices to lift an injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland.
The unsigned order said that members of the DOGE team assigned to the Social Security Administration should have “access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work.”
The lawsuit challenging DOGE’s actions was filed by progressive group Democracy Forward on behalf of two unions — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the American Federation of Teachers — as well as the Alliance for Retired Americans.
“This is a sad day for our democracy and a scary day for millions of people,” the groups said in a statement. “This ruling will enable President Trump and DOGE’s affiliates to steal Americans’ private and personal data.” [….]
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissenting opinion questioning the need for the court to intervene on an emergency basis.
“In essence, the ‘urgency’ underlying the government’s stay application is the mere fact that it cannot be bothered to wait for the litigation process to play out before proceeding as it wishes,” she added.
Dramatic Protests Against ICE in Los Angeles
Los Angeles Times: Los Angeles ICE raids spark protests, fear, outrage. ‘Our community is under attack.’
A series of surprise U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps in downtown Los Angeles on Friday prompted fierce pushback from elected officials and protesters, who decried the enforcement actions as “cruel and unnecessary” and said they stoked fear in the immigrant community.
Tensions remained high in downtown into the evening. The Los Angeles Police Department declared an unlawful assembly and ordered about 200 protesters who remained gathered by the Los Angeles Federal Building to disperse around 7 p.m.
Portrait of Edward Gorey with his cat, by Sam Kalda
The use of so-called less-lethal munitions was authorized at 8 p.m. following reports of a small group of “violent individuals” throwing large pieces of concrete at officers, police said. A citywide tactical alert was issued shortly thereafter.
Chaos erupted earlier in the day in the heart of the Fashion District after federal immigration authorities detained employees inside a clothing wholesaler, and used flash-bang grenades and pepper spray on a crowd protesting the raid around 1:30 p.m.
Hundreds of people then rallied outside the Los Angeles Federal Building at 4 p.m., condemning the crackdown and demanding the release of Service Employees International Union California President David Huerta, who was injured and detained while documenting a raid, according to a statement from the labor union.
“Our community is under attack and has been terrorized,” Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, told the crowd of protesters. “These are workers, these are fathers, these are mothers.”
Forty-four people were administratively arrested and one person was arrested for obstruction during Friday’s immigration action, said Yasmeen Pitts O’Keefe, a spokesperson for Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of ICE. Federal agents executed four search warrants related to the suspected harboring of people illegally in the country at three locations in central Los Angeles, she said.
One more at The Washington Post: Protests erupt in Los Angeles after dozens detained in immigration raids.
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